Microsoft Brings Twitter And Facebook To The Emerging World With OneApp

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Here in the U.S. (and especially in San Francisco), it’s easy to forget that most of the world doesn’t have iPhones, BlackBerrys, Android phones, and the like. Much of the world doesn’t even have access to them, and if they did, they are often way too expensive to actually get one. Should those people be without mobile access to services like Twitter and Facebook? Microsoft doesn’t think so.

Today, it is launching OneApp, an app for people running J2ME on their phones with slow processors and not a lot of memory. Basically, it’s a lightweight app that lets you run more intensive apps by grabbing just the basics of that app that you need. And OneApp also offloads some of the processes required to use the larger apps to Microsoft servers, which handle it over the cloud.

Microsoft is launching OneApp as a part of the mibli consumer mobile service, in partnership with Blue Label Telecoms in South Africa. It will be a free download (though data rates may apply). Initially, there will be a dozen larger apps that OneApp can optimize, including the aforementioned Twitter and Facebook. Others include Windows Live Messenger, and RSS reader, and some games.

The plan is to make OneApp available in other parts of the world too, and to expand the apps that run on OneApp. Microsoft notes that developers will be able to write their apps to work with OneApp simply by using JavaScript and XML. There’s an SDK that will be available at the end of 2009.

Microsoft is hardly the only company making moves to bring some of the more advanced bells and whistles of the mobile web to the emerging world. The core idea behind the recently (and somewhat accidentally) unveiled Facebook Lite is to make Facebook available in places like India and Russia.

It makes sense for companies to take these extra steps to make apps available in places with less technology as it’s not only the right thing to do, but it represents the areas with the most growth potential. OneApp is a part of Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential initiative.

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OverviewFacebook is an online social networking service that allows its users to connect with friends and family as well as make new connections. It provides its users with the ability to create a profile, update information, add images, send friend requests, and accept requests from other users. Its features include status update, photo tagging and sharing, and more.
Facebook’s profile structure includes …

OverviewMicrosoft is an American multinational corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics and personal computers and services. Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, Microsoft Office office suite, and Internet Explorer web browser. Its flagship hardware products are Xbox game console and the Microsoft …

OverviewTwitter is a global social networking platform that allows its users to send and read 140-character messages known as “tweets”. It enables registered users to read and post their tweets through the web, short message service (SMS), and mobile applications.
As a global real-time communications platform, Twitter has more than 400 million monthly visitors and 255 million monthly active users around …

DescriptionWindows Mobile is a compact operating system combined with a suite of basic applications for mobile devices. Devices that run Windows Mobile include Pocket PCs, Smartphones, Portable Media Centers, and on-board computers for certain automobiles. It is designed to be somewhat similar to desktop versions of Windows, feature-wise and aesthetically. Additionally, third-party software development is available …